“Barbie and The Heartbreakers” or “Trips and Quips”

Brian is a huge Tom Petty fan, and Tom and The Heartbreakers are touring this summer. We could have seen them here in Ohio, but for their show outside the nation’s capital, the opening act was Crosby, Stills and Nash. Add to that the opportunity to visit our friends Steven and Dale, (et al.) and it was a no-brainer.

We packed a lot into a very short trip. Saturday we went to Baltimore to see Steven and Dale’s new house (which they’re going to move into just as soon as the current owners repair the damage from the fire that occurred just days after the sale) and then visited the little (REALLY little, but trying) Saturday farmers’ market just around the corner. We continued Brian’s tradition of visiting college football stadia. First, to Annapolis to see Navy’s stadium, then wander around downtown. I’ve always heard Annapolis was really beautiful, and it fully lived up to its billing. New England style meets Southern charm. The perfect weather didn’t hurt one bit, either. We also hopped over to College Park to see what we could of Maryland’s stadium. The latest renovations (everyone’s renovating their stadiums these days, you know) have surrounded the place with parking garages and party pavilions, so it was hard to see much. Saturday night we went and saw “Inception”. Go. Just go see it. Then go a second time to make sense of what you saw. Seriously–I’ve heard lots of comparisons to “The Matrix,” and they’re right. Not that this movie is a copy, by any stretch. It’s just the first movie since “The Matrix” that really makes you think, “What just happened?”

Sunday was non-stop leisurely activities from morning til night. We had breakfast with our friends Joe and Eddie (former Columbus boys who now live in suburban Maryland) in the city. Then we drove down to Mount Vernon (Brian had never been) for a quiet stroll around the grounds and to watch the Potomac glide by. I made sure to find the key to the Bastille, which I missed on my last visit, back in high school. The we drove over to Manassas for a late lunch/early dinner, and then it was off to Jiffy Lube Live for the concert.

Yes, that is the name…Jiffy Lube Live.  When first conceived, it was going to be the Stoneridge Pavilion.  Then Nissan bought the sponsorship rights before it even opened, and so from day 1 it was the Nissan Pavilion at Stoneridge. Then just this January, Nissan was replaced by Jiffy Lube. There comes a point where naming rights become a bit silly. I think we’ve crossed that line here.

I have to say, I was probably more excited about CSN than Tom Petty. I mean, c’mon…these guys are LEGENDS. Think of how many years they’ve been around and the stuff they’ve sung about. But legendary status doesn’t equate to immortality. David Crosby can still belt out a tune, but Stills and Nash have lost a step or two. The incredible harmonies that make me love those guys just weren’t there. But it was still great to see them live. Tom Petty gave me exactly what I expected.  A rockin’ (but not to hard) show, with a nice mix of old favorites peppered with a few tunes from the new album. They threw in some nice twists, with a sweet mellow version of “Learning to Fly”, and the visual effects added punch without overtaking the band.

But of course, this blog isn’t a diary. I don’t mean for it to be a simple checklist of friends visited, sites viewed, and concerts attended. It’s supposed to go deeper, right? So take a dive with me…

First, we couldn’t help but notice as we made our way out to Jiffy Lube Live (snicker) that we were leaving suburban DC and entering The South. Yes, it’s still just a few miles from the capital. And there were still the same stores and restaurants and strip malls. But something had changed. It’s not even something you can put your finger on, but it’s what makes the South different from the North. It just feels different. I’m not going to tell you what causes that feeling, because I don’t know what it is. If you know, please tell me. Is it the accents? The clothes? The hairstyles? The body language? Tell me, because I really don’t know. Other than the noticeable increase in smokers (ick) I just can’t put a finger on it.

The other thing I brought back from the weekend was a series of quotes. The trip was full of ‘em, and they’re worth sharing.

Quote #1 – our dear friends Dale and Steven are currently living with their friend (who has become our friend) Chris, in Columbia, MD. Chris has this fantastic, sprawling ranch house, which he’s put a lot of effort into making very party-friendly. So much so that lots of their friends have their parties there, and the place is actually know in their circle as “The Barbie Dream House”. (those gays!) One of their friends is turning 50, and is having his birthday party there in a couple of weeks. This friend always needs to feel like his parties have something “special” to offer. Apparently, this friend’s definition of “special” includes barbecue served with champagne cocktails. Oh, and he never uses the word “special.” (because that’s not “special” enough) So he calls it “precious”.

So Steven and Chris are loathing this upcoming party, and decided to take the initiative and propose an alternate menu to their friend. They settled on a nice menu of fajitas and paella. Easy to prepare, easy for the guests to get just what they want, tasty, etc., etc., etc. Now they just have to sell their friend on the idea. “Easy,” I tell them, “Just tell him it’s not ‘typical’ Mexican.  It’s ‘Precious Mexican’, or ‘PreshMex’ for short.”  So there you have Quote #1. (World’s longest buildup, world’s shortest quote.)

Quote #2 As we were stuck in traffic someplace, sometime over the weekend, I read the following bumper sticker on the vehicle in front of us:

I am a St-Something-Or-Other High School honor roll parent

Veddy veddy interesting, don’t you think? We’ve been seeing bumper stickers like this for years. But up until now, they’ve always read, “My child is and honor roll student at…” Notice how this one takes the child out of the equation altogether. It’s all about the parent. So much for living vicariously…

Quote #3 – at breakfast on Sunday, we had this funny waiter who talked just like Bruce from “Family Guy”. (thick Southern accent, heavy on the lisp) He kept missing my glass (and only my glass) every time he came around to refill water. Finally, he said, “I don’t know why I keep missing yours.  I must be shocked and appalled by your beauty.”  Appalled?  Did he just say appalled? Is that supposed to be a compliment?

“Don’t Hear the Reaper” or “Have a Cochlear and a Smile”

This is one of the many blog entries which I’ve begun in the past few months, and have never found the time to finish.  Baby steps…

In April of this year, my father willfully and deliberately allowed a doctor to slice open his head and destroy his hearing.

Intrigued?  It’s true, and personally, I think the full story lives up to the teaser. Read on…

At (or around, it’s not certain) the age of 10, my dad had a horrible bout of the mumps. There was a point where they weren’t sure he’d survive. Obviously, he did, but it left him completely deaf in his left ear, and with reduced hearing in his right. It was really never a big deal. Occasionally, as kids, my sister and I could get away with a little something we shouldn’t because he was facing the wrong direction and couldn’t hear something. But what he lacked in hearing he made up for with peripheral vision that bordered on the superhuman. So it was never really a big deal, and people outside the family really wouldn’t know he had any hearing issues unless he told them. He bought a hearing aid about 20 years ago, when he began to notice a little bit of loss in his right ear, but decided the boost in hearing wasn’t worth the effort.

However, over the past two or three years, the hearing in his right ear has begun to degrade, faster and more noticeably. He started going through more and more hearing aids, each more powerful than the last, but with very little result. By Christmas of last year, he had lost around 80% of the hearing in his right ear, and while he could understand you fine if you were speaking directly towards his right ear and spoke clearly, it became very apparent that he was completely missing out on group discussions, (such as at holidays) and was just nodding his head every now and then to feign comprehension or agreement, or smiling when the group laughed at a joke.

What do you do when you go through six different hearing aids and none seems to make things any better? His doctor offered a suggestion–a cochlear implant. Although a radical solution, a cochlear implant isn’t new or untested. And by God, is it amazing. The surgeon plants a receiver inside your head. Leading from this receiver are several fiber-optic wires, which are literally wrapped around the auditory–or cochlear–nerve (the nerve leading from the ear to the brain). The receiver sends electrical impulses through this nerve, to your brain, just like your ear normally does.

Now, if this receiver is inside your head, how the hell can you hear anything? There’s another piece to this whole contraption, which is external. There’s a sound processor, which looks a lot like a hearing aid. The sound processor sits over your ear, and actually does the hearing for you. This processor takes in sounds, and sends them through a wire to a transmitter. The transmitter sits on the outside of your head, and with the help of a magnet, sits right up against the receiver inside your head and passes the signal to it. It’s really, truly amazing technology. In the weeks between Dad’s decision to go ahead with the implant and the actual surgery, I did a lot of reading about it. I learned that the sound you hear isn’t exactly the same as your natural hearing. It’s a very electronic sound. It reminds me a lot of the Cylon centurions from the original “Battlestar Galactica” back in the day. PBS did a documentary on cochlear implants, hosted by Alan Alda, and on their web site, they have examples of what it sounds like to hear with one. Have a look (or rather, a listen):

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1205/features/Interactive/intro1.htm

We were told that the electronic quality of the sound is a limitation of the software, not the hardware. The hardware is already advanced enough to replicate sounds perfectly, but the software just can’t handle all the inputs at this point in time. The nice thing is that as the software improves, the patient can go to the doctor and get an upgrade to improve the hearing experience. We learned this first-hand once my Dad’s incision was done healing and he went in to try out the hearing device for the first time. When they first fired up the device, everything sounded like church bells to him. That was fixed with some very simple software tweaks.  Over the next several weeks, my parents made several trips to the audio therapist to have the software additional refinements. In June, at Benjamin’s graduation party, (which was outside) my Dad was visibly bothered by the noise of the wind blowing in the background. One more tweak at the doc’s office, and that problem was resolved.

We’re told things are actually much easier for someone like my father, who has 70 years of actual hearing under his belt. He can easily distinguish between the sound of a fan and the sound of water running in the sink. (think about it–they’re really very similar sounds, but we’ve learned to tell the difference) Children who are born deaf and receive cochlear implants don’t have that experience to draw from, so learning to interpret all these sounds (especially the difference between “foreground” and “background” noise)  is much more difficult, and takes pretty intensive training.

I’ve also read that, at this point in time, listening to music with a cochlear implant is a waste of time. Music is WAY too complex for the software to handle now. Talking on the phone is also supposed to be very difficult, but can be mastered with lots of practice. (which my Dad is failing to do)

So really, truly astonishing this is. But at the time Dad was considering this, I had to ask…can you really give up what’s left of your natural hearing for this? What if the procedure doesn’t work? What if the implant doesn’t work as well as advertised? What if…? What if…? What if…?

Of course, the decision was my father’s to make, not mine. But I couldn’t help but put myself in his shoes and hypothesize. What would I do? It really brought out a lot of feelings of fragility and mortality in me. Was I being overdramatic? Well, given that this is a pretty common procedure, and has an extremely high success rate, maybe. But I think we all tend to take a look at our own mortality when we see our parents grow old. As I peered into the looking glass, I really felt like my answer would be, “No, I’ll play the hand I was dealt.” Of course, it wasn’t me who was going through the frustration of sitting in a room full of people and not being able to understand a word. And it wasn’t me with a baby granddaughter who was just beginning to talk. So I decided I really needed to walk a mile in his shoes before I could make the decision he had to make.

It was, in the end, the first words of a child which led my Dad to his decision. He couldn’t bear the thought of being unable to hear his grandkids say “I love you”. Besides, although his father died very young, (of kidney failure) his mother’s side of the family has lots of longevity. My grandmother lived to not-quite-95, and the last of her siblings died at 108. At 70, my Dad realized he possibly has 20 more years, and that was simply too long.  Too many words to miss out on.